iTunes Song On eBay for $15,099

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doofy10

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Not sure if this has been posted anywhere yet...
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5071108.html?tag=fd_top

Consumers can resell CDs purchased in a record shop, but what about digital music files downloaded from an online store?

George Hotelling wants to know. In a move that could spark a novel legal test of Internet music resale rights, the Web developer in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Tuesday night put a digital song he purchased online at Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store up for auction on eBay.

Hotelling said he isn't all that concerned about getting his money back for the Devin Vasquez remake of Frankie Smith's song "Double Dutch Bus," which cost him 99 cents. Instead, he said he's using the attempted sale to probe some thorny consumer issues stemming from commercial online music services, in particular, technology known as digital rights management that's used to prevent unauthorized copying. In that spirit, he's promised to donate anything above his purchase price to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an activist Internet legal group.

The effort has apparently resonated with online music aficionados, many of whom have expressed anger at copyright controls used by licensed Internet music services, including iTunes. With the auction set to end Sept. 9, the price on the song had gone up to $15,099 as of Wednesday evening.

"I'd just like to know that if I buy something, whether it's physical or intellectual property, that I'll have my right of 'First Sale,'" Hotelling said, referring to the legal doctrine that allows the owner of a lawful copy of a work to sell it without the permission of the copyright owner.
Click to expand...

Here's the listing on eBay: <taken down by eBay>

I didn't even think of the resale aspect of music from the iTMS. What's this guy trying to prove??
-Doofy
 
It might not seem like much now, but it will make a difference in ten or twenty years when we all buy our music and movies on demand. If you're paying that much for something, you want the right to be able to sell it when you've outgrown it. We can do that with CDs, records, tapes, books, DVDs and Videos.

If we lose that right, we won't get it back.
 
As of right now, it's at $16,600. That's more money than I would ever spend to prove a point, but i hope they prove it.
 
Ok.

So when say for example iTunes 5 or 6 comes along and there is a built in song reselling system also made where you can resell your song back to the iTMS or exchange it for another.

Though to make a business model such as iTMS profitable as a "service" your track or hardware inprint is resold back for say 49c per track. This sounds complex but then again so was a profitable download service a few years ago....


I'm sure apple has plans or has at least discussed this during the planning of iTMS.
 
*Poof* Another notch in the knarled staff of the Evil Recording Empire.
 
Why spend that much on a song in the first place? I wouldn't... besides, you couldn't listen to it without the guy's Apple ID, right?
 
That's the entire point. They're trying to see if this can be done, and if it can, then the RIAA shouldn't complain about people trying to resell digital music files. There is absolutely nothing (well, almost) that the RIAA can do to stop people from buying, selling and trading CD's, so there should be nothing they can or will do to stop the same of MP3's and AAC's.
 
Imagine if I had a little duplicator: I sell you my old car, but retain a copy, I sell you a book, but retain a copy etc. Then imagine I make thousands of copies ... and distribute them for free: world hunger ends, richness for all, universal peace and prosperity! Enter the RIAA: thou may not copy music, thou may not share music, thou may not lend music, thou may not sell music, thou may not perform music in public unless paying royalties, thou may not broadcast music, etc.

That is what the Recording Industry Ass. of America does: prevent anything happening to music except listening and paying for it.

They weren't happy about reselling LP's second hand, they weren't happy about recording cassettes from the radio or duplicating them, they were even less happy about CDR's, and with the digital revolution they seem to have drawn a line.

The issue is valid however: if I pay for an object, I am its owner and as such have the right to resell it. The duplicator issue remains valid, but if I make a contract to transfer my listening rights to you, my own copy will be illegal. So I am infringing the copyright if I retain a copy, but not simply by the sale: re-selling must be possible! E-bay just chickened out a the sight of hordes of RIAA lawyers chanting "subpoena!".
 
I think the RIAA could care less if your CD's get overuse scratches or underuse dust, as long as you keep putting gourmet bread and wine on their table.
 
Okay, so why did they take the eBay auction down? :confused: I'd say, if you transfer the master key for a song to someone else, then they're the legal owner, regardless of whether they paid you for it or not.
 
There was a trick to un-DRM your own legally acquired AAC's, by converting them to formats that don't support the encryption. The impracticality isn't an impossibility.
 
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